Slideshow: Smartphone Images From Space

Some of NASA's most recent images from space don't come from a multimillion-dollar satellite. They come from a $3,500 steel box equipped with a smartphone.

We discussed the PhoneSat smartphone-based box in June. More recently, thanks to a tour sponsored by Littelfuse Inc., we've had a chance to visit the NASA Ames facility, where the nanosatellite was developed, and see photos from its camera.

Click the photo below to check out PhoneSat and some of the images it has delivered.

In April, NASA deployed three smartphone-based satellites (named Alexander, Graham, and Bell) that took pictures of the Earth from space and transmitted the data packets back to Earth, where they were received by a NASA team and by amateur radio operators around the world. This photo was taken by PhoneSat 1 (Bell).(Source: NASA Ames)

Jim Cockrell, mentor of NASA's PhoneSat team, told us how the satellite project got started at the Ames facility about two years ago:

There were people walking around the hallways, asking, "Why should a satellite cost so much?" Somebody said, "The phone I have in my back pocket has more processing power and more memory than any satellite in orbit now, probably more than anything that's in the Space Station. And it's got sensors on it -- gyroscopes and accelerators. It also has a camera. It can do anything a satellite can do."

The scientists realized that a smartphone could compete with a conventional high-tech satellite, and they set out to prove it. Phonesat 1.0 used a Google Nexus One smartphone running the Android 2.3.3 operating system, along with a StenSat radio working at 437.425MHz. The little cubic spacecraft -- about 10cm a side -- also contained 12 lithium-ion batteries, an Iridium transceiver, an accelerometer, and a magnetometer. The entire package cost just $3,500.

During operation, the off-the-shelf smartphone served as the satellite's control. A UHF radio transmitted data and high-resolution camera images back to Earth.

In April, NASA launched three PhoneSats aboard the Antares rocket from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Each nanosatellite was a four-inch cube weighing just three pounds. They were inserted into a spring-loaded dispenser attached to the launch vehicle and then ejected into space at about 250km up.

Transmissions began trickling into multiple sites soon after launch; this indicated that all three satellites were functioning properly. Images (in the form of small data packets) were received by tracking stations and amateur radio operators around the world. As expected, the satellites' orbits naturally decayed after about a week. All three worked normally up to re-entry. Afterward, the PhoneSat team stitched together the data packages to create composite images from the space shots.

Members of the PhoneSat team (with an average age of 23) said the beauty of the project is its use of current engineering. Instead of having taxpayers foot the bill for research and development, the project builds on countless research dollars already invested by chip makers and phone manufacturers. "Six billion people are paying for this satellite," PhoneSat engineer Jasper Wolfe told us.

Chuck, this is an interesting approach. I remember when the military was looking at small, cheap communication satellites. These could be launched cheaply and in large numbers. One launch concept called for using a super gun rather than a rocket to launch them.

One of the STEM program teams at our local high school put a couple of cheap digital cameras into an enclosure attached to a weather ballon. The pictures were sent back via a smart phone. They got up pretty high, so were out of contact for a while. The phone just stored the photos until they were in range.

The fact that the team was impressed with themselves with putting something together like this on the cheap is an interesting statement. I was just talking to my high school age son about the space program. When I worked in this area everything we did was new. Every project involved something that had never been done before. Even my son could see that this has changed with the space program. Perhaps this is why funding has not been what it should be. I wonder.

Anyway, why didn't they use one of the new Nokia phones with the 41MP camera? Nokia probably would have given them the cameras just for the publicity.

I agree, naperlou, it's an interesting approach. As I listened to the NASA engineers, though, I wondered about people who have put cameras on weather balloons (there's even a commercial in which people do that). I don't know whether those people get photos that show the curvature of the earth, or whether they can get to anywhere near the same altitude, but in their case they don't need to launch a rocket to get it done.

I worked for a contractor developing a water quality monitoring system for the space station and we were always amazed at the requirements that came from nasa. It seemed as everything had been done by a committee of junior engineers and required things that weren't necessary to really get the job done. By requiring so much no one took any risks, but made the product horribly expensive. These guys were willing to minimize the project and take the risk that it wouldn't work out. We were worried about rad hardness and seu counts when passing through the south atlantic anomoly ( high proton flux) several times a day. The smart phones had no such hardness and seemed to get by. I admire the initiative.

I, too, echo the congratulations on the team from NASA sending a set of smart phones above the atmosphere. Yes, the phones seemed to work just fine for the short while they were in space on the sub-orbital hop. NASA loves to impress the public and why not? This kind of innovation does need to be fostered. It's the quirky things that sometimes shake things up to get something better on its way. Cheap space? Perhaps cheap...er

It's a very different story if you need to loiter on orbit for years at a time like most satellites do. Radiation harm is cumulative. You just can't simplisticly think "Oh, it worked this time. Why don't we just orbit our smart phones instead of paying big contractors (who know a lot about what works and what doesn't) to build something unnecessarily expensive." Radiation hardening is VERY necessary if you want months instead of hours of operation. Play the odds, sure, but the expensive ride up to orbit alone (or even just the human cannonball ride from Wallops) is justification enough to invest in making sure all systems work. One failure can turn profit and good science into another object for the space junk database. There's no one floating around on orbit to reboot the smart phone when Android decides to have one of its many "bad days" even while sitting on my desk at sea level. True, this story's smart phone(s) lasted just long enough.

Sounds like someone ought to research how to make radiation hardening cheaper? Not many commercial applications for radiation hardened chips today, but if as an old man I take that famed "Pan Am" Kubrick flight to orbit (2001: A Space Odyssey), I'd like to keep my cell phone apps going without interruption. :)

I wonder if they recovered the payload and how well the phones worked when they came back?

I suspect that because the phones were manufactured such that they could be sold in the EU that they would be lead free. Lead free and vacuum don't mix. My guess is that tin whiskers would bring them down within a month. This is in addition to the radiation hardening needed.

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